FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS BONDERS. 
BY 
HENRY W. WILLIAMS, M.D., 
PROFESSOR OF OPHTHALMOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
i 
[Reprinted from the Proceedings ok the American Academy 
ok Arts and Sciences, Vol. XXIV.J ERANCISCUS CORNELIUS DONDERS. 
BY 
HENRY W. WILLIAMS, M.D., 
PROFESSOR OF OPHTHALMOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
[Reprinted from the Proceedings of the American Academy 
of Arts and Sciences, Vol. XXIV.] FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS DONDERS. 
In assuming the honorable duty of preparing a biographical notice 
of Professor Donders, the writer must acknowledge indebtedness, for 
many details, to accounts of his life and work by his coadjutors and 
friends, Moleschott, Snellen, Nuel, and Landolt, and to his own speech 
at the festival in his honor on his seventieth birthday. 
Franciscus Cornelius Donders was born at Tilbury, in Holland, on 
the 17th of May, 1818; the tenth child and only son of parents in 
very moderate circumstances. His father's death occurred about a 
year later. From his seventh to his thirteenth year he was at 
school in Duizel, where he learned to write his own language, some- 
thing of French, mathematics, and music. From eleven to thirteen 
years he served as submaster at the school, thus defraying his ex- 
penses. His studies were continued at Liege, in pursuance of his 
mother's wish that he should become a priest; but this plan being 
defeated by the occurrence of the Belgian revolution, he returned to 
the French school at Tilbury. Becoming fond of study, he was sent 
to Boxmeer, where he learned to write and speak Latin with great 
fluency, and a little Greek, but where mathematics, for which he 
seems to have had special aptitude, was neglected. At the age of 
seventeen he entered the School of Military Medicine at Utrecht, 
where he became enthusiastic in the experimental study of chem- 
istry, the natural sciences, and physiology. After four years of 
study, desiring to obtain his diploma, he applied for examination ; but 
a technical objection being made by the Faculty, he was advised to 
present himself at the University of Leyden. Here, through the 
merits of his dissertation and an address in Latin in which he con- 
vinced the Faculty that he was worthy to receive the degree of 
Doctor, he made such an impression of his capacity that in three days 
he returned to Utrecht as M. D. Of his " Dissertatio Inauguralis 
sistens Observationes Anatomico-pathologicas," Professor Moleschott 
says, " In this trial test I could well discern the future master." 
VOL. XXIV. (N. S. XVI.) 466 
FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS DONDERS. 
Before he was twenty-two years of age, Donders was sent as 
junior military surgeon to the garrison at Vlissingen. Here, and 
especially at The Hague, the seat of government, where he was sta- 
tioned a year later, he had the advantage of polite society, and of 
contact with distinguished men, - with opportunities for culture in 
art and literature, as well as in science and general and professional 
knowledge. He amply profited by these advantages, and perfected 
his acquaintance with French, English, and German, so that he 
wrote and spoke these as if they had been his native tongue; acquir- 
ing also a grace and urbanity of manner for which he was distin- 
guished in all his social and professional life. The attention of his 
superiors being attracted by some of his published scientific papers, he 
was sent again to Utrecht, in 1842, to reorganize the Military Medical 
School; and was appointed Professor of Anatomy and of Physiology 
at the institution where so recently he had been a pupil. 
Here began Donders's real scientific life. Convinced that book 
knowledge, especially in the natural sciences, has little value in con- 
tributing to further advancement, unless completed by careful personal 
experimental investigation, he accepted the offered position without a 
moment's hesitation, although he thus gave up the pleasures and 
advantages of the capital, and accepted a smaller income : " For I 
felt," he says, " that to teach was my vocation." 
Thus he established himself for life, as it proved, in a small city 
of Holland. Quickened into still greater activity by the labors he 
assumed, and animated by the example of Professor Mulder, - who-e 
laboratory became, as Donders expressed it, the cradle of physiologi- 
cal chemistry, - and in co-operation with his venerated teacher, Pro- 
fessor Schroeder, he devoted himself with ardor to explorations in 
every part of anatomy and physiology, verifying each observation with 
his own eyes, and accepting nothing as proved which his own experi- 
ence had not confirihed; but showing marvellous lucidity in directing 
researches, in forming conclusions, and in appreciating the values of 
results gained and the means of utilizing them., " There is no domain 
in the vast science of Physiology," says Landolt, " in which Donders 
did not leave traces of his labors. The vitality of tissues, the circula- 
tion of the blood, digestion, secretions, movements, language, the 
organs of sense, the secrets of the nervous system, have all in turn 
been investigated by this indefatigable explorer." He founded, with 
Ellermann and Jansen, the " Nederlandsch Lancet," that they might 
have an organ for the announcement of new discoveries; and he 
largely augmented his own labors by frequent contributions to its FRANCISCOS CORNELIUS BONDERS. 
467 
pages. Rousing emulation in others, he disarmed jealousy by his 
candid and cordial recognition of their meritorious work. Hoarding 
none of his own acquisitions, he added to the joys of discovery the 
pleasures of disclosure. As a teacher, he was radiant; he seemed 
superb in the lucidity, conciseness, elegance, and adaptiveness of 
his style of explanations, - which he often made, in several ver- 
naculars, where he saw that he was not understood by an intelligent 
disciple. Donders himself says: " To teach is as great a jov as to 
learn. Acquired knowledge is as a hidden treasure, which slumbers 
useless until it is disclosed in teaching." His instruction was most 
suggestive, for himself as well as for bis hearers, - opening as it 
were new horizons of thought. Nuel says of his manner of teaching, 
" Few have equalled, none surpassed him." And Moleschott, in his 
address of greeting on his seventieth birthday, says of him, " Donders 
has remained at Utrecht, but all the world has come to him." 
We find him, at the age of twenty-four, giving, as Professor, eigh- 
teen lectures weekly for forty-six weeks of the year, on anatomy, 
histology, and physiology, and yet finding time for a vast amount of 
original investigations. In his modest address on the occasion of his 
jubilee, last year, he thus expresses his appreciation of the favorable 
circumstances by which he had been surrounded: " No other period 
has been comparable with this for great discoveries in so many fields 
of biological science. • Von Baer had discovered the ovule of the 
mammifers; Bischoff had demonstrated that the embryo is built up 
exclusively by means of segmentation of cells; Schwann found ir 
the cell the origin of all the fundamental forms of life ; Henle hac 
created, in his "Anatomic Generale," an organon of histology. At the 
same epoch appeared the Physiology of Jean Muller. It was in such 
a world I had the good fortune to have place; every circumstance 
seemed to be adapted to render my life and my work prolific." 
In 1847 Donders became Professor Extraordinarius at the Univer- 
sity of Utrecht, giving courses on Legal Medicine, Hygiene, Anthro- 
pology, and Ophthalmology. " After a time," he says, "my teaching 
of Ophthalmology gave a new direction to my life." Two distin- 
guished men from Edinburgh were one day among his auditors, and 
urged him to visit the great eye hospitals of England at the time of 
the International Exhibition in 1851. At London he saw Bowman, 
equally renowned as physiologist and ophthalmologist, and also Von 
Jaeger of Vienna and Von Graefe of Berlin. These friends became 
to him " the most precious treasure of my whole career." He could 
announce to them the recent discovery, by his compatriot Cramer 468 
FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS BONDERS. 
of Haarlem, of the modus operandi by which was effected the accom- 
modation in the human eye, hitherto unexplained; and he learned from 
them of the invention of the Ophthalmoscope by Helmholtz; by means 
of which all the secrets of the before unexplored interior of the eye 
could be revealed to the wondering observer. Before returning to 
Holland he went to Paris in company with Von Graefe; there visiting 
the large Cliniques for diseases of the eye, and comparing their meth- 
ods of diagnosis and practice with those seen at London. Thenceforth, 
without abandoning general physiology, Bonders worked especially 
in physiological optics as applied to eye affections, in so doing largely 
enhancing his already great renown. Impatient to await the arrival 
of an ophthalmoscope which Helmholtz was to send to him, he con- 
structed one for himself; not of superimposed glass plates, as contrived 
by Helmholtz, but of a silvered mirror with a central perforation, as 
now generally used ; - and was enthusiastic in his instant perception 
of the value of its disclosures. 
In 1864 appeared Donders's monumental work on the Refraction 
and Accommodation of the Eye, published by the Sydenham Society 
at London, and soon translated into many other languages. It came to 
the world of Ophthalmology as a revelation, - a complete and finished 
creation, involving infinite labor and research, - from which nothing 
could be retrenched without loss, and to which nothing could be added 
without superfluity. It created scientific Ophthalmology. His dis- 
covery of Hypermetropia, his explanation of Astigmatism, his indi- 
cation of the relations between different forms of Strabismus and the 
hypermetropic or myopic conditions of refraction of the eye, were 
and must remain masterpieces of absolute demonstration. 
It would be almost impossible to give even a catalogue of Donders's 
published works. His friend Nuel, in the " Annales d'Oculistique," 
cites two hundred and eight of these, and adds, " This list is by no 
means complete." Already, in 1846. he had translated into Dutch a 
German work on Ophthalmology by Ruete, which seems unquestiona- 
bly to have inclined his spirit of investigation towards the eye. He 
says, " Thanks to the progress of the histology and physiology of the 
eye, its diseases are those which best admit of a physiological explana- 
tion." To elucidate some questions which had suggested themselves 
in this translation, Bonders published within about a year, in the 
Nederlandsch Lancet, three notable papers on Physiological Optics, - 
among these a monograph on "The Relations between the Conver- 
gence and the State of Accommodation of the Eyes." 
After his return from England, in 1851, Bonders obtained endow- 469 
FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS BONDERS. 
ments for the Netherlands Hospital for Diseases of the Eyes, which, 
with the co-operation of Snellen, he established and conducted at 
Utrecht; - thus entering a field where the large opportunities for 
direct and skilled personal service towards his suffering fellow men 
afforded a new satisfaction to his sympathetic nature. The means 
thus offered for continuing scientific observation were also most 
advantageous, and afforded ample fruition in the hands of such a 
man, - who loved accurate research, not only for its own sake, but 
for the delight of imparting and applying the knowledge thus gained 
for the relief of humanity. 
So great a man cannot be wholly unconscious of his worth ; but 
Donders's modesty was sometimes almost diffidence. We rejoice that 
in his later years he was allowed the gratification of knowing that he 
had been eminently useful, not only by his own labors, which had 
advanced Ophthalmology a century, but largely also by rendering 
applicable the results of the labors of others. The invention of Von 
Helmholtz, which indeed opened a new world to Ophthalmology, 
might have rested in the laboratory of the renowned physicist who 
devised it, but perhaps little suspected its practical value, as a mere 
bit of apparatus for experiment, because he lacked opportunities for 
its clinical use. Moreover, as an apostle of Ophthalmology, Bon- 
ders became the exemplar and teachei' of disciples from near and far 
countries. 
When, in 1862, upon the decease of Schroeder, the Professorship 
of Physiology at the University was tendered to Donders, he once 
more obtained subscriptions of large sums for the building and equip- 
ment of a new physiological laboratory, so supplied with all modern 
means of research that it should be a model institution. But his 
enormous labors in so many departments made it imperative that he 
should divide his responsibilities with worthy assistants, - Snellen 
assuming the management of the Ophthalmic Hospital, and Engle- 
mann the charge of the laboratory and of the courses in Microscopic 
Anatomy and Physiological Chemistry, - Donders reserving to him- 
self the instruction in General Physiology and Physiological Optics, 
and the time for original investigations. At the Festsitzung der 
Ophthalmologischen Gesellschaft, in 1886, in the great hall of the 
University of Heidelberg, for the presentation to Von Helmholtz of 
the Graefe Medal, which, according to the statutes of its founder, 
should be given once in ten years to him of any nationality who had 
done most for the promotion of Ophthalmology, Donders, as the most 
distinguished member of the society, was selected as the orator. After 470 
FRANCISCUS CORNELIUS DONDERS. 
a feeling eulogy of the founder, Von Graefe, lie spoke of Von Helm- 
holtz, who, as the inventor of the Ophthalmoscope, had marked the 
dawn of a new era in our knowledge of diseases of the eye ; aud of 
the gratitude due to him for having thus endowed the profession and 
humanity, taking away the reproach of our former utter ignorance of 
the pathology of the deep-seated parts of the eye, and well deserving 
the high award then for the first time made. 
In May, 1888, Donders attained his seventieth birthday; at which 
time, according to the laws of the University of Utrecht, its Professors 
retire from office. This event was made the occasion of a festal 
homage, rendered by the King of Holland, the most distinguished of i 
his fellow countrymen, his fellow citizens, his coadjutors, and by 
representatives of his disciples and of Ophthalmology from every part 
of the world. It was an apotheosis. There he gave a most simple 
and unostentatious narration of his life and work, with grateful ac- 
knowledgment of the friendships by which he had been encouraged, 
and of the circumstances by which he had been favored. 
Once again, in August, 1888, he assumed the place of honor at the 
Heidelberg annual convocation of Ophthalmologists. Now, alas we 
shall see him no more. Since March the 24th, Ophthalmology mourns 
its chief, - the world of science one of its brightest ornaments.